


Lucky To Be Alive

by Twice_before_Friday



Series: October? No, I think you mean Whumptober [20]
Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Confusion, Gen, Lost - Freeform, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27119053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twice_before_Friday/pseuds/Twice_before_Friday
Summary: Prompt No 20. TOTO, I HAVE A FEELING WE’RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORELost| Field Medicine | Medieval"Malcolm, darling, where are you? Are you alright?"That's...a really good question. And one for which he doesn't have an answer.
Series: October? No, I think you mean Whumptober [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947595
Comments: 21
Kudos: 71
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Lucky To Be Alive

It's not the pain that wakes him. It's not the cold or the rushing sound of water.

It's that ridiculous ringtone that Ainsley had assigned for when his mother calls. She'd commandeered his phone when they'd gotten together for coffee earlier in the week — a coffee date she'd insisted on so she could vent about their mother's insistent hounding — and switched his ringtone for Jessica to What Does The Fox Say. He meant to switch it back, but never got around to it.

A case came up and he became entirely consumed with unravelling the identity of their latest killer. Little things — like fixing his phone, sleeping, and eating — got pushed to the back-burner while he followed the evidence and lost himself in the case.

But it's that damn song that pulls him from his uneasy slumber now. It takes him a moment to realize where the sound is coming from, and a moment longer to convince his hands to move to the inside pocket of his suit jacket to fumble his phone free.

By then, it's stopped ringing.

And he can't remember why he's holding it in the first place.

He also can't quite figure out why he's lying half submerged in a fast-flowing stream of water. Maybe a river? Probably not a brook, he thinks. Brooks babble. This water is practically screaming.

His upper body is on the rocky shore, but his legs are still in the frigid stream and he doesn't care for the feeling at all.

He tucks his phone away and slowly drags himself out of the water, cursing his limbs for being so damn uncooperative, and then nearly changing his mind and crawling back in when he realizes how fucking cold it is outside of the water.

But there are trees nearby, and he thinks that maybe it could be warmer there, so he hauls himself to his feet and forces his legs to walk that direction, tripping and stumbling over his numb feet as he goes. 

He stops halfway there, startled by the ringing in his ears and tapping at them softly, wondering if there's maybe water in there. He almost chuckles when he realizes it's his phone, but right then, it stops ringing.

Again.

He makes it to the treeline and promptly forgets what he was trying to do there. So he leans against the nearest trunk and tries to catch his breath, taking a moment to wipe away the water that's sluggishly dripping down his face and blinking hard when his hand comes away red. 

Not water, then.

Blood?

His?

Probably not a good sign.

He pushes himself off the tree and starts walking through the forest he's somehow found himself in, but then What Does The Fox Say is playing again and this time he's quick enough to answer his phone before it stops singing to him. 

"Hullo?" Malcolm is surprised by just how raspy his voice is. His throat feels like he'd been coughing a lot. Maybe he's got a cold?

"Malcolm!" Jessica shouts, relief and fear tinging the single word, but Malcolm has to pull the phone from his ear at just how loud she is. He has a headache. But Jessica presses on, thankfully lowering her voice a level or two. "Malcolm, darling, where are you? Are you alright?"

That's...a really good question. And one for which he doesn't have an answer.

"Uh, I dunno," Malcolm says and then stumbles over a tree root that's engineered it's way free from the ground. He barely manages to catch himself before he completely loses his balance. He sucks in a breath and brings the phone back to his ear to add, "In the trees?"

"In the…" Jessica cuts herself off before asking, "Are you hurt?"

"Uh. Maybe." His head hurts. Frankly, everything hurts. But he's so cold that the pain doesn't seem too intense. So that's nice.

"Bright?" Gil's voice on the line surprises him. Wasn't he just talking to his mother? "Kid, where are you?"

"Gil?" Malcolm asks, looking around for a moment, expecting the man to be nearby before he remembers he's on the phone.

He's losing the thread of this conversation too quickly for his liking and he's so damn cold that his teeth are chattering hard enough to hurt and he sort of just wants to curl up beneath one of the fallen trees and have a nap. And then he starts to wonder — are they still trees if they've fallen over, or are they logs at that point?

"...you hear me? Bright!" Gil's tinny little voice startles him enough that he realizes he's stopped walking and is standing with the hand holding his phone resting limply by his side, just staring at a log. Tree. Tree log? "Malcolm!"

"Hmm?" he says, looking down at the phone in his hand. He has the wherewithal to switch it to speaker so he doesn't have to hold it to his ear. This is all requiring far more attention than he has to spare. "Gil?"

"Yeah, kid. It's me." Gil's sigh of relief is palpable even through the speaker of his phone and Malcolm wonders why Gil was so upset in the first place. Before he has a chance to ask, though, Gil says, "Bright, I need you to stay on the phone with Jessica, okay? We're coming to get you."

"I'm lost," he states simply as he looks around at the surrounding trees. Dawn is approaching and the sky is already beginning to lighten, but that doesn't help him figure out where to go and he's so, so cold and suddenly there are tears on his cheeks. "I wanna go home."

"I know, darling," Jessica says and it makes him sad to hear the sadness in her voice. "We're coming to get you."

It makes him feel just a little bit warmer, knowing Gil and Jessica are together right now. It was strange at first, considering how big of an impact Gil's had in his life, but he's really just glad they found happiness with one another. 

"Malcolm?" Jessica calls out.

"S'cold," he says, wrapping his arms around his body, but having his wet suit press against his skin even more just makes him colder than he was before.

"I know. We'll be there soon and Gil has a nice warm blanket in the car for you," Jessica assures him. There's talking in the background and he can hear the distinct sound of Gil's engine and then Jessica's voice is back, "Darling, is there anything around you that might help us narrow down where to look for you?"

His feet have been carrying him as they've been speaking and when he looks up he sees that he's not terribly far from the river (stream?) again. He must've turned and walked the wrong direction. Or maybe he hadn't walked far to start with. 

"Water," he says and spies a nice big rock next to the stream that seems like a good place to sit for a just a little break. "Big rock. Gonna rest a minute."

"That's fine, dear, but I need you to keep talking to me, alright?" Jessica says and then her voice gets muffled as she speaks to Gil. Malcolm uses the time to climb on the rock and curl up on his side, placing the phone in front of his face. He wishes he had a pillow. "Can you tell us what happened? Where you're hurt?"

It's all very fuzzy in his mind. He was chasing a lead. 

And then the lead was chasing him. 

Then there was a gunshot and a sharp pain in the side of his head, but he was running over a bridge at the time and he thinks he may have lost his balance. Then he doesn't remember much of anything. Until his phone woke him up.

He needs to change that ringtone.

"Think I might be shot," Malcolm mumbles. It's getting so hard to keep his eyes open.

At least he's not so cold anymore.

Jessica's gasp makes him open his eyes again, but then he remembers she's just on the phone. Which is too bad, really. He'd like to see her.

He sleeps for a while, Gil and Jessica's voices lulling him into an almost peaceful repose, but he's eventually woken by hot hands on his face and a blanket draped over his body.

"Oh my God, Malcolm, you're frozen!" Jessica exclaims. She looks terrified and he can't quite understand why. He's too tired to ask though. And his head hurts an awful lot. 

"Jesus," Gil whispers and presses something to the side of his head, sending a jolt of white-hot pain through his nerves that has him trying to squirm away from the touch. "Hang on kid, the paramedics will be here any minute."

"M'fine," Malcolm tries to force out, but it comes out as more of a hum than anything else. He hears a scoff, unsure if it came from Gil or his mother, but he doesn't have long to dwell on it.

The rest of his day (and the two after that) are lost to the darkness. 

He wakes up three days later with What Does The Fox Say playing on a loop in his head, and he thinks it may be worse than the wound caused by the bullet that somehow ricocheted off a lamppost before skimming along his head, taking a healthy chunk of his skull along with it. Miraculously, his brain was spared, outside of the minor concussion he earned when he fell off the bridge.

He's told, repeatedly, that he's lucky to be alive.

As he looks at Gil and Jessica, sitting hand in hand at the side of his bed, he thinks he's mostly just lucky to have those two in his life. A family that supports him and loves him, that drives out to the middle of nowhere at the crack of dawn to save him and then stays by his hospital bed for three days straight.

He definitely doesn't need to be reminded just how lucky he is.


End file.
